34 Regret Quotes To Reflect

Regret is an emotion that touches everyone at some point in their lives, capturing the essence of missed opportunities and lingering "what ifs." Whether it's a path not taken, words unspoken, or actions left undone, regret can be both a poignant reminder of past choices and a powerful catalyst for personal growth. In this collection of 34 carefully selected regret quotes, we invite you to pause and reflect on the lessons encapsulated within each one. These quotes offer diverse perspectives, encouraging you to embrace your experiences, learn from them, and ultimately use them as stepping stones towards a more fulfilling future.

1. “I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.” - Soren Kierkegaard

2. “so here i sit. a sum of the parts. about a third way down this wonderful path, so to speak. and i've been thinking lately about a friendship that fell apart with time, with distance, and with the misunderstanding of youth. i'm trying not to confuse sadness with regret. not the easiest thing at times. i dont regret that certain things happened. i understand that perhaps i had a choice in the matter, or perhaps i believe in fate. probably not, but so far actions as small as the quickest glance to events as monumental as death have pushed me slowly along to right here, right now. there was no other way to get here. the meandering and erratic path was actually the straightest of lines. take away a handful of angry words, things once thought of as mistakes or regrets, and i'm suddenly a different person with a different history, a different future. that, i would regret. so here i sit. thinking about a person i once called my best friends. a man who might be full of sadness and regret, who might not give a damn, or who might, just might, remember the future and realize that's where its at.” - chris wright

3. “You can't regret the life you didn't lead.” - Junot Diaz

4. “You can tell it any way you want but that's the way it is. I should of done it and I didn’t. And some part of me has never quit wishin I could go back. And I cant. I didn’t know you could steal your own life. And I didn’t know that it would bring you no more benefit than about anything else you might steal. I think I done the best with it I knew how but it still wasn’t mine. It never has been. ” - Cormac McCarthy

5. “Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?” - Kazuo Ishiguro

6. “We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.” - Steve Maraboli

7. “Faythe…?" The tremor in his voice broke my heart. Then understanding surfaced, and his tear-filled eyes searched mine desperately. "No. No," he whispered through clenched teeth. "This was not wrong. It’s the only thing I’ve done right in months. Don’t you dare regret this.” - Rachel Vincent

8. “Our biggest regrets are not for the things we have done but for the things we haven't done” - Chad Michael Murray

9. “It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.” - William Faulkner

10. “The expression in her eyes was bitter as nightshade. 'You ask me about regret? Let me tell you a few things about regret, my darling. There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning of the chain that brought us from there to here. Should you regret the whole chain, and the air between, or each link separately, as if you could uncouple them? Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself? I've given more thought to this question than you can begin to imagine.” - Janet Fitch

11. “Those silly girls had no idea what they were really celebrating. They had no idea what it took to bring Agatha and her friends together seventy-five years ago. The Women's Society Club had been about supporting one another, about banding together to protect one another because no one else would. But it had turned into an ugly beast, a means by which rich ladies would congratulate themselves by giving money to the poor. And Agatha had let it happen. All her life, it seemed, she was making up for things she let happen.” - Sarah Addison Allen

12. “Some of our children are our justifications and some are but our regrets.” - Khalil Gibran

13. “And it was pointless...to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse. There was no recovering them now. You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell...for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn't changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You're left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is to go on or not. But if you go on, it's knowing you carry your scars with you.” - Charles Frazier

14. “Hiljadu puta se pokaješ za ono što kažeš, rijetko za ono što prećutiš.” - Meša Selimović

15. “The moment she was cursed, I lost her. Once it wears off- soon- she will be embarrassed to remember things that she said, things she did, things like this. No matter how solid she feels in my arms, she is made of smoke.” - Holly Black

16. “The first law of nature is self-preservation. Cut off that which may harm you. But if it is worth preserving, and is meaningful, nourish it and have no regrets. Ultimately, this is true living and love of self...from within.” - T.F. Hodge

17. “When someone you love says goodbye you can stare long and hard at the door they closed and forget to see all the doors God has open in front of you.” - Shannon Alder

18. “Takamasa Saegusa: 'Seigen, a mere member of the Toudouza, had the effrontery to sully the sacred dueling ground. For that reason, our lord had already decided to subject him to tu-uchi before long. Cut off his head immediately, and stick it on a pike!'Gennosuke could hardly believe his ears. Such an insult to Irako Seigen was unwarranted. It was pride. For Gennosuke, Irako Seigen was pride itself.Takamasa Saegusa: 'Fujiki Gennosuke! It is the way of the samurai to take the head of the defeated enemy on the battleground. Do not hesitate! If you are a samurai, you must carry out the duty of a samurai!'Samurai...Saegusa, Lord of Izu, continued shouting, but Gennosuke did not attend. That word 'samurai' alone reverberated through his body.If one aims at the juncture between the base of the skull and the spine, decapitation is not that difficult, but Gennosuke could muster no more strength than a baby. He grew pale and trembled with the strain. He could only hack with his sword as if he were sawing wood. He felt nauseated, as if his own cells one after another were being annihilated. But this...Lord Tokugawa Tadanaga: 'I approve.'Takamasa Saegusa: 'Fujiki Gennosuke, for this splendid action you have received words of thanks from our lord. As a sign of his exceptional approval, you shall be given employment at Sunpu Castle. This great debt will by no means be forgotten. From this day forward you must offer your life to our lord!'Prostrating himself, Gennosuke vomited.” - Takayuki Yamaguchi

19. “Why had he done it? Why couldn't it just not have happened? Why didn't they have time-travel, why couldn't he go back and stop it happening? Ships that could circumnavigate the galaxy in a few years, and count every cell in your body from light-years off, but he wasn't able to go back one miserable day and alter one tiny, stupid, idiotic, shameful decision...” - Iain M. Banks

20. “You have been given a second chance to start your life over. You can't throw this opportunity away. If you do you will be a colossal fool. If you get the chance to do something and don't do it then you'll simply live with regret. That's a worse situation than trying something daring and maybe not succeeding. At least you tried. Isn't that what you want to show your kids?” - Lorena Bathey

21. “I don’t have any regrets,” a famous movie actor said in an interview I recently witnessed. “I’d live everything over exactly the same way.” “That’s really pathetic,” the talk show host said. “Are you seeking help?” “Yeah. My shrink says we’re making progress. Before, I wouldn’t even admit that I would live it all over,” the actor said, starting to choke up. “I thought one life was satisfying enough.” “My God,” the host said, cupping his hand to his mouth. “The first breakthrough was when I said I would live it over, but only in my dreams. Nocturnal recurrence.” “You’re like the character in that one movie of yours. What’s it called? You know, the one where you eat yourself.”“The Silence of Sam.”“That’s it. Can you do the scene?”The actor lifts up his foot to stick it in his mouth. I reach over from my seat and help him to fit it into his bulging cheeks. The audience goes wild.” - Benson Bruno

22. “It was no good to look back, to apologize for what had happened, or to wonder what could have been different.” - Lily Blake

23. “I thought of all the hardships and people that I had lost in the past few days alone, but, most of all, I thought of how I didn't regret any of it.” - Shannon A Thompson

24. “Whatever you want, at any moment, someone else is getting it. Whatever you have, someone else is longing for.” - Laura Lippman

25. “Every step towards your dream today is a step away from your regret tomorrow.” - Steve Maraboli

26. “He took her hand without question, without fear, and he never regretted it.” - Jessica Fortunato

27. “And I never started to plow in my lifeThat some one did not stop in the roadAnd take me away to a dance or picnic. I ended up with forty acres; I ended up with a broken fiddle—And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,And not a single regret.” - Edgar Lee Masters

28. “Regret and pangs of conscience are feelings we assign to others to make the world seem a little more fair, to even things out a little and provide consolation. In reality, those who do wrong to us never think about us as much as we think about them, and that is the ultimate irony: their deeds live inside us, festering, while they live out in the world, plucking peaches off trees, biting juicily into them, their minds on things lovely and sweet.” - Samuel Park

29. “Be not wishing and pining but thankfully content.  For it is a short bridge between wanting and regret."- from "Dimpellumpzki” - Richelle E. Goodrich

30. “Starting right now, attempt to live as if you have no regrets.” - John Cornelius O'Callaghan V

31. “Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.” - Bob Seger

32. “When the last autumn of Dickens's life was over, he continued to work through his final winter and into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation?Would we trade all those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute?” - Dan Simmons

33. “Je ne regrette rein.” - Christina Lauren

34. “Being a child is such a shining gift, yet we don't know how precious it is until it's worn out and gone away.” - Storm Constantine